Professional No-Limit Hold 'em Volume 1 Review Thread

[fraac]

Fascinating, Sunny. I don't play cash games but from what you've said I'll definitely try applying your book to tournaments.

[1p0kerboy]

Sunny,

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Those of you saying button is somehow justified in his isolated decision to call your reraise based on his initial decision (mistake) to raise after you limped UTG, is globally shortsighted imo.


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He's justified because of his pot odds, implied odds, and information that he has now obtained about our hand. The fact that he originally raised isn't really relevant at this point, other than the fact that the pot odds have changed because that money is now in the pot. Nobody said anything different than this.

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Secondly, I believe many of you are way overestimating the implied odds required by your opponent to play this situation profitably, even given the isolated decision. Almost no one in this thread has cited anything in the way of math to back up some of the implied odds assertions made.

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I started to do the math but it's actually an extremely long process factoring everything in. But it's definitely +EV against a range of AK+ KK+, which Matt said is what he would have in this spot. As I have said before, if your LRR range in EP is too much bigger, there are other easier ways to exploit it than trying to set-mine.

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You estimate implied odds by looking at what you stand to make on average in a given situation over all possible outcomes, not *the most you can possibly make in one particular outcome*. So, saying "OMG the raise is ten percent of my stack therefore I'm getting 10-to-1 in implied odds!" is incorrect.

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??? Nobody said this.

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When you call 10 percent of your stack, your implied odds are usually much less than 10-to-1.

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Maybe this is where your logic is flawed. The button isn't calling 10 percent of his stack. He's calling 6%.

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(The things most people get surprised at is how much set-over-set cuts into equity, as well as how much the sucking-out-equity an overpair has even when the underpair flops a set.)


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This is one of the reasons I stopped short on mathing-out the equation earlier. There is a lot (distribution %, winning %, etc.) that goes into a problem of this sort. Maybe I'll get bored and work on it.

[1p0kerboy]

Sunny,

perhaps you are making the same mistake of viewing everything that happens preflop as being one action.

[1p0kerboy]

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(mistake) to raise after you limped UTG

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Mistake in what sense?

If the button happened to have aces here, would you say it is a mistake for us to LRR?

[Matt Flynn]

1pOkerboy,

you're right that he's only calling 6% in the moment preflop. he is correct to call. but the lrr is the one who profits from the money going in. any additional money that goes in preflop is good from the lrr's standpoint and bad from the caller's standpoint. if lrr can raise more and still get called, he should.

put another way, the more AA can get into the pot preflop, the better off he is. if a small lrr results in the most money going in, it is almost always better. the exception is when the value of information lost exceeds the cost of the additional money going in. but that's rare if you leave some nonpair hands other than AA/KK in the range.

globally, putting 10% in against that range with 66 to set mine is negative EV. (i have done the math.) my guess is you are underestimating set-over-set effects.

overall 66's preflop play costs him money. planning preflop such that he ends up in that situation more often helps you. yes, there are caveats and ranges to consider and information costs, but this one is pretty clear as nl decisions go.

here's an extreme and contrived example. put a third player in the hand with KK. suppose one minraises to 2bb, 66 calls, then each minraises. you are correct to call 2bb more. in fact 66 is correct, in isolation and disregarding prior and future action, to call each 2bb raise right up until he are all-in with 66 against AA and KK with < 17% equity. he still botched the hand badly.

with the lrr 66 does't necessarily make a mistake, but it does fall victim to the bad end of a range, namely the limp-reraising end of the limper's limping range.

matt

[1p0kerboy]

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globally, putting 10% in against that range with 66 to set mine is negative EV. (i have done the math.)

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Here's the thing.

I'm not looking at this from a "globally" standpoint and I don't think you should either. That's why I said looking at this problem from a standpoint of "one big preflop action" is a fallacy.

If hero raises to 10bb it is certainly -EV to call when his range is AK/KK/AA. I hope you see that I'm not disputing that. Rather, I'm saying with the given problem of calling 6bb while 16.5bb are in the pot and there is 90bb behind against that same range is +EV.

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you're right that he's only calling 6% in the moment preflop. he is correct to call. but the lrr is the one who profits from the money going in.

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The kings are profiting from the original raise.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the original raise was a bad play, not knowing that we had kings this particular time that we limped.

The button actually benefits from being priced in to call the reraise. It is at our expense, even though the play might not necessarily be -EV for us because the pot at this point is offering an overlay to both hands.

I still would want to reraise a little bit more to not give my opponent +EV odds to set-mine. If we reraise to 14bb, for instance, the button is then (ignoring MP again) forced to call 10bb while the pot is 19.5bb and we have 86bb behind. This makes the buttons call with a pair a mistake, rather than allowing him to choose the correct action.

I reiterate that I feel it's better to look at every individual action and the benefits/consequences of each rather than grouping them globally.

[1p0kerboy]

Matt, let me give you another example.

The pot is $200.

We have the A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].

The board is 5[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]6[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]T[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]5[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img].

Our opponent holds the A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]2[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] and we know it.

Both players have $200 behind.

He bets $65 on a semi-bluff. We raise to $130 because we have the best hand. We figure, it's incorrect for our opponent to get $130 in on this street with nothing but a flush draw.

But this is a fallacy.

Now it costs our opponent $65 to call while there is $395 in the pot. The pot is laying him 6-1 on a call, while he is 1-5.1 to make his flush.

And here's where the fallacy lies:

As soon as your opponent bets, the money is not his. It's part of the pot. So it doesn't really matter when your opponent put what money into the pot up to that point. It's irrelevant.

[mojed]

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I still would want to reraise a little bit more to not give my opponent +EV odds to set-mine.


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But the point is not to consider each act in isolation, but the whole preflop action. The simple fact of the matter is if you put 10BB in before the flop with 100BB stacks, playing for set value only, the play isn't going to be profitable. Sure the call of the l/rr might be profitable, getting 6:104 implied odds at best(though Sunny may claim that when considering global ranges it isn't), but the preflop action as a whole is not profitable.

Edit: While I agree that perhaps the small reraise isn't the best, we do it because of our overall preflop objective, which is: put 10BB in the pot and get an opponent to put 10BB in the pot with a hand that isn't going to dominate us. A straight up raise to 10BB isn't going to achieve this. A reraise to 14BB might not achieve this either, the extra 4BB might divide the villain's calling range significantly (whereas we assumed that the almost minreraise would be called by the villain's entire raising range, which is wide).

[1p0kerboy]

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But the point is not to consider each act in isolation, but the whole preflop action.

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This is the wrong way to look at it, and my posts explain exactly why.

[Matt Flynn]

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But the point is not to consider each act in isolation, but the whole preflop action.

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This is the wrong way to look at it, and my posts explain exactly why.

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i love this question, just a great discussion point. when work allows today i'll post a more detailed response here. your example is right of course. so why do we differ? post coming.